


diving

by owlinaminor



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Confessions, Established Relationship, Long-Distance Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-20
Updated: 2017-05-20
Packaged: 2018-11-03 00:27:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10955892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/owlinaminor/pseuds/owlinaminor
Summary: Otabek doesnotblurt out his first “I love you” to his boyfriend of nine months at the end of their weekly Skype call.  At least – that’s what he would’ve said until a few painful seconds ago.





	diving

**Author's Note:**

> super excited to finally post my fic for the otayuri zine, "to worlds unknown"! so many talented people contributed to this zine and the end result was truly beautiful; i feel very honored to have been included.
> 
> thank you to [becky](https://twitter.com/dickaeopolis) for betaing (or, italicizing like half of yuri's dialogue).

 

“Я тебя люблю.”

The words escape Otabek’s mouth unbidden – as though pulled from somewhere deep within his chest, pearls yanked out of the ocean by a fisherman with a sharp hook and no sense of timing.  Otabek prides himself on his ability to think through every decision, to descend slowly through layers of himself, examining every emotion and opinion and perception he encounters and act in a manner honest to the sum of his parts.  Otabek processes his feelings, Otabek crafts long pro and con lists, Otabek writes down ideas on a notebook by his bedside table so that he can reevaluate them in the morning.

Otabek does _not_ blurt out his first “I love you” to his boyfriend of nine months at the end of their weekly Skype call.  At least – that’s what he would’ve said until a few painful seconds ago.

He feels exposed, sitting cross-legged on his bed, staring into his laptop’s camera.  He feels the smooth plane of the bedsheet beneath his legs, the prickling of goosebumps rising on his arms.  He feels as though he just finished a free skate and is suspended in a staggering heartbeat between the end of his music and the applause of his audience.  He feels as though his chest split open and his heart fell out, red and bloody and thrumming, to stare up at Yuri.

Yuri.

Otabek feels stripped bare, sitting cross-legged on his bed, staring into his laptop’s camera.  Yuri stares back.  His expression is unreadable – a blank canvas, a block of ice.  It’s the expression he throws at journalists when they ask him questions he doesn’t want to answer.  Otabek has never seen it directed at himself before.

Otabek knows he should say something.  Apologize, take it back, claim it was a joke.  But it’s too late, he and Yuri have been staring in a silent stalemate for what feels like hours – and besides, he’s _not_ sorry and he _doesn’t_ want to take it back and it _wasn’t_ a joke and –

And his screen goes black.  Call over.

 _“Albasty.”_   Otabek buries his face in his hands.

Otabek spends the next few hours doing everything he wished he’d done before the final few moments of his Skype call: carefully weighing his options.

He makes lists, he makes charts, he makes diagrams.  He calculates the probability of Yuri freaking out and breaking up with him (alarmingly high), and the probability that the sudden “end call” was Yuri’s way of freaking out and breaking up with him (alarmingly higher).  He makes a pro-con list for attempting to get back together with Yuri if he was just broken up with (the list of pros spans three pages, while the list of cons is just “losing even more sweatshirts to Yuri’s wardrobe” and “he might finally have to get a Twitter”).  He recreates Yuri’s expression after the “I love you” in the forms of pencil sketch, Microsoft Paint drawing, and free verse poem.  He even maps out bike routes to the nearest three pedestrian bridges.  (Those, he rips into pieces and throws down his trash chute, but he can feel their malevolent judgments from the building’s basement.)

Otabek falls asleep around one o’clock in the morning in the middle of listing Yuri’s most redeeming qualities. (“Determined” is listed four times, and “fearless” is listed twice.)  He dreams of the view over Barcelona at sunset and the feeling of diving diving diving through a blue so brilliant he’s afraid he’ll never want to return to the surface –

And then a high-pitched ringing noise pulls him back up.  He sits straight, eyes flying open – but the noise doesn’t stop.

It’s his doorbell.

It’s five-thirty-six in the morning, and Otabek’s doorbell is ringing.  He wipes his eyes, pushes his lists and diagrams and calculations off to the side, pulls on his slippers, then pads through his apartment to the front door.  He wonders, drowsily, who it might be.  It’s too early for any door to door advertising, but too late for any of his friends in the area to call on him for a place to crash.  He unhooks his deadbolt, starts to pull open the door, and –

“Yura?”

Yuri Plisetsky stands in Otabek’s doorway.  His cheeks are overshadowed by dark rings, his hair is falling out of its messy bun, and he’s shivering in a baggy, gray sweatshirt that he stole from Otabek at last year’s GPF.  But his eyes are bright and burning, more brilliantly blue than any ocean Otabek could imagine.

“Я тебя люблю,” he says.

And Otabek doesn’t process his feelings – doesn’t craft a pro-con list – doesn’t write down ideas on a notebook by his bedside table.  He just steps into the hallway, opens his arms, and pulls Yuri to his chest.

* * *

“Why did you come all the way here?” Otabek asks.

He and Yuri are sprawled in his bed, Yuri’s head on his shoulder and two mugs of coffee on the bedside table and all his lists and diagrams and calculations pushed off onto the floor.  Otabek’s navy fleece blanket is half tangled in Yuri’s legs, half curled into an aimless pile on the side of the bed – it’s not covering him at all, but he feels warm despite it.  As though the warmth is rising up from somewhere deep within him and igniting the embers glowing in his chest.

Yuri glances up at him, eyebrows slanted in this way that can only mean Otabek’s due for a reprimand.

“I mean, not that I don’t like having you here,” he clarifies hurriedly, before Yuri can open his mouth.  “But I’m… I’m very surprised.  When you ended the call like that, I thought you were… mad at me for saying it so suddenly.”

 _“Mad?”_   Yuri lifts his head and shifts so that he’s facing Otabek, his clear blue-green eyes now suddenly scant centimeters from Otabek’s own.  “Beka, why the fuck would I be _mad?_   That was the most romantic thing you’ve ever done.  If I was _mad_ at anything, it would’ve been that I didn’t say it to you first.”

“So then, you dropped everything and flew all the way here in the middle of the night because…” Otabek feels the corners of his mouth pull up in a smile as he begins to figure it out.

“Because I wanted to be more romantic than you. _Obviously.”_

Otabek shakes his head slowly.  “You are the most ridiculous person I have ever met.”

“Yeah, but you love me,” Yuri counters.

Otabek doesn’t know how to argue with that – so instead he leans forward, catches Yuri’s chin in his fingers, presses their lips together in a soft kiss.  Yuri opens his mouth and steers the kiss deeper, tongue dancing and tasting of coffee and oranges and so _warm_.

“You _love_ me,” Yuri repeats an eternity of moments later, breathless and red-faced, pressing his forehead to Otabek’s.

“I do,” Otabek replies.  He grins.  “But I’m not letting you out-romance me, next time.”

“Oh, we’ll see about that,” Yuri tells him.  “I’ve already booked the Russian National Orchestra for our anniversary.”

Otabek wants to retaliate, wants to call out what has to be a bluff, wants to say anything – but he’s caught instead by the color of Yuri’s eyes, brilliant and aquamarine as the ocean on a sunny day.  He’s diving again – and somehow in the past nine months he must have grown gills, because he doesn’t think he’ll ever need to go up for air.

_Я тебя люблю._

**Author's Note:**

> [twitter](https://twitter.com/owlinaminor) / [tumblr](http://owlinaminor.tumblr.com/)


End file.
